


Last Night

by abbichicken



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Bickering, Consensual Violence, Domestic, M/M, Mansion Fic, Scars, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-31
Updated: 2011-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-22 01:13:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbichicken/pseuds/abbichicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik refuses to cover up the evidence of the night before. Charles is not amused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [averzierlia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/averzierlia/gifts).



"Oh, my god, _Erik_ , what happened?"

Erik yawns, and reaches for coffee, as if Raven had said nothing at all. He pulls the newspaper towards him, and scans the headline.

"Erik!"

He looks up at her, expressionless. "And good morning to you, my dear."

"But what happened? Was there...did someone try to..."

"What?"

"Well, _look at you_..."

Erik looks down at himself, half expecting to find he's absently poured coffee down his vest. He's so tired, this is quite possible. He'd never have noticed. But no, no coffee, no obvious issues.

Not to Erik.

"It looks like someone tried to... _strangle_ you, Erik, really..."

"Oh, that."

"And the bruises! Who were you fighting with? When did this happen?"

Erik's face twists perfectly into distanced amusement. "Oh, last night." He nods, as if that was a perfect explanation. Smiles, to himself.

"What?" Raven feels very, very uncomfortable, all of a sudden.

Charles picks that moment to wander in, looking similarly sleepy and not-with-it.

"Morning," Erik says, picking up the newspaper and not looking at Charles at all.

"Mor-..." Charles starts, and then squints and does minor panicking. "Erik, er, a word?"

With a mildly irritated exhalation, Erik puts the paper down again. "Yes?"

"Outside?"

"Inside is fine for me?"

"No, I mean..."

Erik's teeth click as he grits them in _please everyone, morning is not the time for half-inquisitions_. "What is it?"

"You're not..."

Raven, tiring of this non-exchange, clips in and asks Charles exactly what's been going on, because just _look_ at Erik and she should know about this kind of thing because if they're in some kind of danger...

"No, no...no danger..."

Erik rolls his eyes, and cuts through Charles' twitching stutters. "Your brother's got some interesting...talents, Raven. Much stronger than he looks."

Raven's eyes flick too-wide. "You...did...to..."

Charles swallows and fills a glass with water, downing it immediately, before ignoring her and imploring Erik to go and put a polo neck on.

"Okay, if you want to do my laundry for me."

"I'm sure Raven's got one you can borrow."

"We are _not_ the same size!" Raven bursts out, a little louder than she means to, embarrassed as she is by the conclusions she's drawing here.

"Raven, could you please excuse us a minute?"

She nods, but her eyes are flickering yellow. "We're going to have words, later. I'm worried about you."

"No need for that at all. Nothing worrying here. Please go now. All too much." Charles is hoping this is a really, really strange dream, but, it's seeming increasingly unlikely.

Raven fair flounces out of the room, shooting both of them dark, confused looks.

"Going to wipe her mind?" Erik asks, with an eyebrow raised.

"I...you can't go around looking like that all day."

"Like what?" Erik asks, thinking that he might as well have some fun at Charles' expense, especially given how much fun Charles had at his expense last night.

"I can see my..." Charles flexes his fingers, remembering how it felt to clutch so tight at Erik's throat that Erik went white, then red, then purple, and remembering the sensation of having him fight for breath and composure beneath him. Four fingerprints and a thumbprint grace Erik's neck, bruising purple. There are scratches at the collarbone, where Charles dragged his nails over Erik's Adam's apple, testing the vibrations there, feeling Erik retch beneath him at the furious and incessant pressings at his body. "I just thought you'd..." he lames.

"Are you planning on finishing any sentences at all today, Charles?"

Charles just shakes his head.

God, and you can see these weals down the back of Erik's arms from the...and where he's clearly been gripped tight and...yeah...bent this way and that under someone, and sure, Erik looks clean and the wounds are clean and now that Charles thinks of it, there's an odd scent of disinfectant in the air that does seem to centre around Erik and _why_ is this so excruciating, why is this happening...

"You always wear polo necks..."

"I have more than one look, you know."

"No, no...didn't know."

"Didn't care, last night, as I recall it. You were more than happy to make all these marks."

"I assumed..."

"Don't make me answer that with the obvious..."

"Urgh, no, don't. Oh, come on, just, go and put a jumper on? You can't just walk around in underwear all day..."

"No, Charles," Erik says, with what is unmistakably a _chuckle_ , even if it does sound like it ran through a cheesegrater. "Don't make me hide who I am?" His eyes are wide and, his tone is, Charles observes, mocking.

Bastard.

"It's not who you are that concerns me..." _It's who everyone else thinks I am_ , Charles doesn't finish.

"Besides," Erik continues, "it's a beautiful morning. I could use some sun on my skin. It'll accelerate the healing process, come now, I'm sure you know all about that kind of thing. It didn't feel like the first time you'd asserted yourself in bed."

"But please," Charles tries, grabbing Erik's arm then and pulling at him, "come and just...before anyone else sees..." His efforts come to less than nothing.

"I think you used up all your strength last night," Erik says, still with that fucking smirk on his face.

"You're doing this on purpose."

"Yes, yes I am. What, you don't think I have a sense of humour?"

"I don't think anyone else in this house is going to be amused."

As it happens, Alex thinks it's _hilarious_. This is possibly to cover up his own confused and complex feelings about his own sexuality, but nonetheless, as Raven shares her trauma in that "I don't want to tell you about this but I have to tell _someone_ " sort of way, Alex is already plotting a multitude of excellent jokes.

He tries a few of them out on Hank, except Hank is so uncomfortably disinterested that it takes Alex a few goes to get across that this is _scandalous_ and eventually Hank slips into his own little world of thinking about this, in which he wonders what else they don't know about the Professor, and he stops listening to Alex altogether. Alex gives him a cursory kick and wanders off to try his jokes out on Sean instead, feeling that his attempt to brush away his excessive _feelings_ on this matter has somehow backfired, and that he might just have come across as a _bit weird_.

Charles is just pacing around the kitchen, trying to find a way to make Erik cover up, and failing, miserably.

"You could just, y'know, _make_ me go and put the jumper on," Erik points out, doing a spirally hand gesture near his head. Charles narrows his eyes.

"I shouldn't have to. Fuck, Erik, have you no sense of decorum?"

"I think I answered that one when we were in the car yesterday."

"What's _wrong_ with you?"

"So very many have tried to find out. Clever men, too, some nearly as clever as you, Charles, and they couldn't find anything wrong with me at all. So...if you find out, do let me know."

"You're _preposterous_ ," Charles retorts, and walks out, hoping to find Raven before she speaks to anyone else, which, of course, he is already too late for.

She is, though, kicking the punchbag that Charles had installed in the parlour. As Charles opens the door, she looks like she might very well substitute him for the punchbag.

"What are you playing at?" she says, striding right up to him, slamming the door behind him, face-to-face.

Charles puts his hands up and backs away.

"I really don't think it's any of..."

"... _my business_?"

"Quite."

"Of course it is. I don't mind you screwing around, Charles, god knows I've lived with it for long enough, and I don't mind who you want to do it with, but that's...that's _weird_ , Charles, what he's making you do, that's not right..."

"Oh, no, he didn't...make me...do anything."

"But you wouldn't...you don't..."

"It's complicated. But, I can take care of myself, you know?"

"I wonder if you can. I know what you're like, I've seen you get carried away before..."

"That was different, Raven, come on, she was a _gymnast_..."

"So? She had you wrapped around her little finger - _don't_ laugh and rework that sentence, god, you're exhausting - and it was weird, Charles, she turned you weird, and I can see you looking all like that again and there he is _parading_ evidence of whatever the hell you were doing and you know that can go really, really wrong?"

"What? Look, at least sit down..."

"Don't!"

"Okay, fine, don't..."

"You might have found yourself someone who likes being told what to do, although I'm not convinced he's not manipulating you in some way, but you don't get to tell me what to do. Not when you're so _deviant_..."

Raven bites her lip.

Charles watches her think about what she's said.

"It's completely different," she says, turning an odd shade of green. "Completely different."

Charles doesn't ask for any more on that.

"Still. The marks on his neck? And those cuts? That's _weird_. And I don't even want to think about the rest of it. And _god_ why can't you just be _normal_?"

Dig a hole, dig a hole...

She glares hard at Charles and leaves him alone in the room, slamming the door behind her.

She walks straight into Erik in the hallway.

"Hey, hey..." he says, stopping her from storming past him with a firm hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry if I'm..."

"Flaunting it? Yeah. Good. It's..." Raven stops herself before she makes any more judgements out loud, this time.

"If it's any consolation, I think you should know that your brother is very...together. I couldn't take advantage of him if I tried."

"I don't think I need to know any more."

"And we are...careful, you know."

"Oh yeah, that looks really careful. Really _safe_."

Erik shrugs. "Nothing about the world is safe right now."

"That really helps."

"Any time," Erik says, and leaves her, patting her on the back as he goes, suggesting that he's not quite as serious as he sounds.

Raven goes off and wishes really, really hard that she was a normal girl with a normal brother and normal parents and a pony.

And, after a while, she allows herself to clock the fact that she isn't twelve years old any more and neither is Charles, and that they can both do what they like, and be what they like, and isn't that, after all, everything she's asking of him? Isn't it?

She doesn't admit to herself that the thing that's really upsetting her here is that she's simply jealous of Charles, though. Not yet.

Charles is standing by the window when Erik finds him, staring at nothing much outside.

"I see you still haven't bothered to make my life easier," he says, frowning at Erik's arms. In the clear light of day it really does look so much ~~better~~ worse than he'd thought.

Erik slides his trousers down at the hip and shows Charles the massive, purpling bruise there. He smiles as Charles catches his breath. Turning, he pulls his vest off in an easy, fluid movement, and Charles' whispered _fuck_ is a neat appreciation of how scratched up Erik's back is.

Dressing again, he turns back to Charles. "Speaking of making people's lives easier, I can't stop thinking about last night because I can't stop feeling everything you left me with, and it's really only because I have excellent self-control that I'm not walking around with a massive fucking hard-on right now."

Charles just nods.

"So if I'm not allowed to forget it, I see no reason you should be able to.

Again, Charles just nods.

He's really got no comeback.

So, by the time they're all gathered together for classes, when Charles expects that there'll be some kind of sniggering and giggling and something, the level of quiet in the room is surprising. Alex looks sullen, Hank looks...miles away, and isn't quite looking at Charles at all, Sean clearly doesn't care about anything much and Raven is all smiles (completely her, everything that happened before = over, response to things).

All of them seem unusually co-operative, as Charles outlines his lesson plans for them all for the rest of the day.

Charles is relieved, if confused.  

Erik might, just, be a little bit disappointed.

As the rest of them scatter, he turns to Charles and says, "See? Told you it didn't matter. As ever, I've nothing to hide."

Charles shakes his head. "You might have excellent self-control, but I..."

"Have something to hide?"

Charles clears his throat.

Erik looks around. Everyone's gone.

"Want me to help you with that?"

"Training, Erik, this is training time..."

"Sure, if you want to call it that..."

Charles concludes that he really can't argue with Erik at all.


End file.
